Pleistocene Park: An Ice Age Ecosystem to save the world
Two visionary scientists in Russia are bringing back a vanished ice age ecosystem to save the world from climate change. They’ve created Pleistocene Park to make this happen.
Pleistocene Park think Jurassic, but for wooly mammoths
Yep, fighting climate change with wooly mammoths
Right now permafrost trapped underground in the arctic is melting, releasing carbon and methane into the atmosphere. If this continues it will trigger runaway global warming.
In the Ice Age millions of animals including wooly mammoths roamed Siberia, creating huge grasslands that kept the ground much cooler than it is today.
Nikita and Sergey Zimov, the father and son duo behind Pleistocene Park, are bringing animals to the park to work with nature to keep these gasses frozen in the ground.
Large herbivores = less snow = less melting
Snow keeps the ground warmer..say whaaat?! It’s like a huge blanket for the ground to cosy up to. Introducing large herbivores removes the snow by creating grasslands that keep the permafrost beneath it at bay.
They’ve launched a Kickstarter campaign to bring more animals to the park
If it’s successful the yaks and bison will reunite with other Pleistocene animals the Zimov’s have at the park including semi-wild Yakutian horses, musk ox, wizent, moose, and reindeer. It will be the first time they’ve roamed together in over 10,000 years!
What about the wooly mammoths?!
Harvard professor George Church is working to clone a mammoth from remains found frozen in the permafrost. He hopes to travel to Siberia to personally deliver the resurrected wooly beast to its rightful home. But it may be some time before that happens.
So why support the campaign?
1. The Zimov’s are environmental badasses
For virtually his entire life Nikita has laboured alongside his father, in one of the most remote and inhospitable places on earth, to build Pleistocene Park. Together they spent a month fighting polar sea ice and arctic gales in a tiny boat to bring musk ox from Wrangel Island. The following winter Nikita, alone, drove a heavy duty offroad truck thousands of miles in the dead of winter, following frozen rivers through the roadless wilderness, to bring more animals to the park. Everything they have done so far has been with their own personal income, hard labour, and risking their own lives.
2. Bringing these animals to the park will create an Arctic Serengeti
One day the Zimov’s expect to see millions of animals roaming the arctic landscape. The Kickstarter campaign is the first step in restoring this long lost ecosystem.
3. Backing this campaign will help fight climate change for you
You can check out the Kickstarter Campaign here
